Election analyst Nate Silver predicts GOP will win the Senate [VIDEO]

Nate Silver, the former New York Times analyst who rose to prominence after correctly predicting every state that voted for Barack Obama in 2012, gave the Republican Party a 60 percent chance of retaking the Senate in November — a chilling prospect for Democrats who once found Silver’s predictions comforting.

Silver invited ABC’s Jonathan Karl into his office at FiveThirtyEight, his new data-driven news website that launched last Monday. The analyst broke down the GOP’s chances of picking up six seats, the amount they would need to win in order to regain a Senate majority.

West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana are all expected to flip, with polls consistently showing wide Republican leads in those states. That means the party only needs to win three more states — and many more than that remain in play.

Of the competitive states, Silver rates Arkansas the most likely to be a GOP pickup, followed by Louisiana and North Carolina. But the chance for potential upsets in blue states like Michigan and Colorado remain high.

All told, Silver gives the Republican Party a 60 percent shot at flipping the Senate.

Minnesota Democratic congressman Keith Ellison disputed Silver’s prediction in an after-segment panel, dismissing it as a “snapshot in time” and insisting that his party’s dire polling is going to “motivate our base to really get out there.”

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